Askeaton Contemporary Arts 2025 Welcome to the Neighbourhood celebrates Irish and international artists

Throughout 2025 Frank Wasser continues as Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ artist-in-residence at Tate Library and Archive. Askeaton Contemporary Arts 2025 Welcome to the Neighbourhood celebrates Irish and international artists. Photo via askeatonarts.com

2025 Askeaton Contemporary Arts Weclome to the Neighbourhood is well underway curated by Michele Horrigan

The annual Askeaton Contemporary Arts artist residency programme and festival ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ situates Irish and international artists in the midst of Askeaton each summer, discovering new potentials of creative energy, the making of place and innovative ecological thinking.

From the community hall to the River Deel, castle ruins, streets and surrounding countryside, Welcome To The Neighbourhood looks to the rich layers of Askeaton’s daily life as its inspiration.

Since 2006, artists from around the world have been at the centre of the community investigating, uncovering and creating new understandings of our locale. Many artworks made in Askeaton have been presented elsewhere in Ireland and abroad in exhibitions, art biennials and film festivals, evoking Askeaton’s reputation since medieval times as a place of exchange, trade and cultural knowledge.

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

advertisement
advertisement

This year, artists Roderick Buchanan, Niamh Schmidtke, and Stuart Whipps live and work in County Limerick throughout June 2025. A programme of events accompanies their stay, free and open to all, culminating with a special celebration on Saturday 28 June featuring new artistic encounters throughout Askeaton.

Friday, June 20 saw Deirdre O’Mahony and Nora Foley’s works on display. For three decades, artist Deirdre O’Mahony has made art about landscape and land use, most recently with a focus on farming. In her 2024 film The Quickening, she recorded farmers, scientists and agricultural policymakers, and transcribed their conversations into folk song for singers and musicians, accompanied by breathing animals and the movements of insect and creatures of the Irish earth, such as the dung beetle. Beginning a new project exploring farming life and the volatile demands of the market, harvesting, and food regulation, she now centres her work around Askeaton. O’Mahony’s aim, to find a productive ground between local concerns and State and EU policies, is an ambitious one, where she intends to bring her discoveries to the European Parliament. Join for a screening of The Quickening and conversation with Askeaton farmer Nora Foley.

Monday, June 23 brings a Desmond Castle Walking Tour, dated to 1199, Askeaton Castle towers over everyday life in the town as a reminder of a medieval world that once existed here. Continuing Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ longstanding relationship with the site and its long-term restoration. Attendees joined stonemason and former site foreman John Moone for an informative tour of the castle and its expansive grounds, including The Hellfire Club, Constable Tower and Banqueting Hall.

Tuesday, June 24 brings an evening of archaeological discovery at Askeaton Community Hall.
Archaeologists Paul O’Keefe and Sean Tiffin present a talk and a one-night-only display of artefacts found in and around West Limerick during recent excavations as part of the Foynes-to-Limerick Road Project. Since early 2024, a team of over seventy-five archaeologists have carried out excavations in advance of the road’s construction. Learn more about their working methods, the exciting unearthing of prehistoric stone axes and pottery, and news about impressive early medieval metalwork such as the stunning Ardshanbally broach-pin.

Wednesday, June 25 at 8 pm at Top of the Town, Michael Holly’s Ardshanbally brings a series of films. Michael Holly continues his Only in Askeaton series of films, found online at askeatonarts.com, finding new topics in the West Limerick landscape to investigate, and offering new viewpoints and ideas to how we live in an enriching land. This year, he focuses on the medieval Ardshanbally broach-pin, unearthed during excavation works for the new motorway underway. Probing the complex reasons for its construction – Adare’s affluent billions and Ryder Cup golf, and a new age of industrialisation – he muses on the intersecting politics of commerce, heritage and ecology that have made the broach reappear after a thousand years buried.

Thursday, June 26, at Ballysteen Carnegie Library, Séagh Mac Siúrdáin, an independent advisor on environmental campaigns along the west coast, has for many years supported local communities to sustain and manage the natural resources of rivers and maritime areas, such as seaweed habitats.

A regular visitor to Askeaton, he will speak about the challenges and hopes that lie ahead for the region, ranging from Askeaton’s large industrial complexes, our polluted Deel River, and the unparallelled yet threatened beauty of the Shannon Estuary. In conversation with curator Michele Horrigan, Séagh will speak of his experience and future prospects for community activism and local future ecologies we can generate through kinship with nature. The talk is organised in association with Askeaton Ballysteen Natural Heritage.

Saturday, June 28 at 3 pm, the annual Open Day at Askeaton Community Hall celebrates the work of 2025’s artists-in-residence. A reception at Askeaton Community Hall will be followed by a guided tour. From Glasgow, Roderick Buchanan is an explorer of people, places, cultural identity and forgotten histories and the political implications of everyday life. For decades, around the world, he has opened up new understandings of how the everyday and the political are entwined. He recently organised a football game in Germany with three, not two teams, playing each other.

Of dual Irish-Swedish identity, Niamh Schmidtke explores the political complications of ‘being green’, examining the relationship between listening and speaking, considering the kinds of voices that time, nature and humans could have with one another. Her recent writing includes a narrative between the fairies of Ireland and multinational corporations on the pros and cons of building wind farms on Draftia, an island off the west coast of Europe.

Stuart Whipps from Birmingham considers art as a way of learning from people and places, using curiosity to discover the world. He once restored a 1979 MINI car with the assistance of former factory workers, and made exhibitions in local museums to discover the idiosyncratic characters and stories held within public collections.

Further afield, Askeaton Contemporary Arts partners with fellow cultural organisations to find innovative and resilient contexts for the artists we work with. Seanie Barron will hold a solo exhibition of sculpture and his renowned walking sticks at Kinsale Arts Weekend in July. Throughout 2025 Frank Wasser continues as Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ artist-in-residence at Tate Library and Archive, and Lyonn Wolf presents a solo exhibition at Flat Time House, both in London. Bryony Dunne continues as artist-in-residence at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin, culminating with a major exhibition in 2026.